Many communication devices, including portable communication devices, support telephony. Typically, a calling party initiates a call by inputting or otherwise utilizing a telephone number that is specific to the called party (such as a home telephone number, a mobile telephone number, an office telephone number, and so forth) though some telephone numbers serve as a portal to a suite of contact addresses for a given party. In some cases the telephone number for a calling party is provided to the called party to permit the called party to identify the calling party prior to accepting an incoming call.
Telephone numbers typically observe a particular regionally-specific format or syntax. Many times this format reflects the particular format selected by a corresponding public telephony system. As one simple example in this regard, in the United States public telephony system telephone numbers are typically ten digits in length, with three of the digits representing an area code.
Moreover, such public telephony system telephone numbers are typically presented pursuant to a corresponding presentation format. For example, the aforementioned 10-digit U.S. public telephony system telephone numbers are typically presented with the 3-digit area code segregated in some fashion from the remaining seven digits (sometimes with a mere space but often, in addition, by containing the three digits of the area code within parenthesis). In addition, the remaining seven digits are often split between a 3-digit prefix and the remaining four digits by use of a hyphen. Accordingly, a typical U.S. public telephony system telephone number is often presented using the format “(555) 123-4567.” Similar spacing and/or hyphenation approaches are used when presenting public telephony system telephone numbers in other regions (albeit as appropriately modified to suit local conventions.
Private-exchange telephone numbers are also known. Many enterprises utilize, for example, a so-called PBX (or other enabling platform, such as but not limited to Research in Motion's™ Mobile Voice System™) to privately support and effect telephony both within and without the organization. In many cases, these private-exchange telephone numbers are simply a shortened version of a corresponding public telephony system telephone number. For example, if the public telephony system telephone number for a given office is (555) 123-4567, then a typical corresponding private-exchange telephone number might be the 4-digit number “4567” or the 5-digit number “34567.” Using this approach, for example, a person calling from within such an enterprise to another party within the enterprise can initiate the call by merely dialing the private-exchange telephone number for that called party rather than the complete public telephony system telephone number for that party.
Though such approaches are well established and satisfactory for many application settings, there nevertheless exists considerable room for improvement.